[lit-ideas] "Irreversible" -- a notion the Greeks lacked
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 12 Aug 2004 10:39:42 EDT
M. Chase is trying to reconstruct Plato's argument for the immortality of
the soul:
>we observe two processes or
>"comings-into-being" (Greek *geneseis*) : one from A towards B and the
>other from B towards A. Chances are, therefore, that this is true of
>the contraries life and death as well. Now, everybody knows there is a
>path from being-alive towards being-dead ; this intermediary state or
>process is called "dying", as the path from being-small towards
>being-big is called "increase". But this implies there is a converse
>path as well, this time from being-dead to being-alive; it's called
>"coming back to life" (*to anabi=F4skesthai*, 72a).
>That we have to do not with conceptual but with ontological =
>notions...
------
One problem here is that Greek lacked a word for 'irreversible' (or
'reversible' for that matter)? Surely some processes are irreversible.
I could check with the OED what things are dubbed by the OED to be
'irreversible', but there must be some. Also, I was unable to find an entry in
Short/Lewis, Latin Dictionary, for 'irreversibilis', or any cognate ('reverso',
means 'turn back', generally).
Cheers,
JL
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